The Monster and the Child

The child hid under the bed while the monster slept, its snores filling the room with a rhythmic sound. The monster turned to its side, and the giant bed — double the dimensions of a king size — groaned under its weight. The child waited, biding his time. The monster had been asleep for only a little while it needed to be in a deep sleep before the child could complete his mission.

The child, code-named Adam, stayed still. His small, human-boy frame fit easily beneath the monster’s huge bed. Trained from birth, Adam knew how to control himself, not to be distracted by random bursts of pins and needles (发麻) sneezing or other bodily functions. Each monster destroyed was one more step towards securing humanity’s future. And it was up to him, and other children like him — because monsters couldn’t smell any threat in humans who hadn’t yet reached puberty.

Adam waited.

From beneath the bed, he could see the bottom of the wall, painted purple and decorated with a panel of baby monsters in various poses of play. They were all different creatures, but most were furry, with big teeth that could rip human flesh with ease, and horns that could slice a belly like a knife. Even the baby monsters were dangerous. Adam had seen that in the training vids (视频). This one was barely more than a baby. But you had to get them young before they became too dangerous and killed people.

Eventually, the monster’s snores settled into a gentler rhythm. It stopped moving about and its breathing became slow and even. Adam eased himself out from under the bed. It felt like a long distance. He pulled a syringe (注射器) from the toolkit at his belt and edged closer to the monster.

It was sleeping on its left side. Adam bent down, extended his arm, aimed with precision, and pushed the syringe into the back of the monster’s furry neck. It was a thick, large needle designed for this purpose and it slid in without a hitch.

The monster’s body jerked (抽搐) for a moment; its head swiveled (转向另一边) to face Adam; big, round, electric-blue eyes, open in shock, stared at the human boy. Then as the drug took effect, the monster’s jaw went slack and it fell unconscious.

Adam stood still, making sure the monster was completely under. He pulled out another syringe from his toolkit and extracted the monster’s blood.

It was red. He’d known it would be red. The XX-D monsters, classified under category A, all had red blood. Adam had done simulations and was familiar with the monster’s biology. But still, it was different seeing it in person. It seemed strange to him that this thing shared such a fundamental similarity with humans.

It’s easy to observe an athlete like Tiger Woods and feel like he’s from another planet. He has won 14 major tournament(锦标赛) titles and about $122 million in prize money and ads. He also has a happy family. It seems that he is too perfect to be one of us. But Woods has more in common with you than you might think.

Woods’ parents — particularly his father — set high expectations for him when he was a child. Before Earl Woods’ death in 2006, he told Golf magazine, “My purpose in raising Tiger was not to raise a golfer. I wanted to raise a good person.”

By age two, Woods was already swinging(挥舞) a golf club. But once he entered school, Woods’ father was careful to send the message that school work came first. Woods wasn’t allowed to practice until his homework was done.

When Woods finally reached the professional tour, his father continued to expect a lot of him. “Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of human. The world is just getting a taste of his power,” he said in 1996. Clearly, Earl Woods had great expectations of his son.

In this way, Tiger Woods is actually like a lot of us. Many of us feel a similar pressure to make our parents proud. When this happens, it’s easy to let that pressure overwhelm(压倒) us.

In a perfect world, we would all grow up to be Tiger Woods-like successes in our own fields. But that isn’t possible. There are many things that we can’t control in this life, despite our best efforts.

There is, however, one thing that we can do: we can try to be a “good person”, as Earl Woods asked his son to do.

When Mark Dunajtschik escaped from the prison camp near the end of WWII, he was forced to leave his homeland of Yugoslavia. Five years after the war ended, he became a toolmaker. The trade he mastered then may have decided on his career, but it was the life lessons he learned that finally shaped the character of the man he’d someday become.

Almost without housing in post-war Germany, Dunajtschik’s only choice at that time was living in a shelter for the mentally and physically disabled. Seeing the daily challenges his housemates faced, he realized how just lucky he was. “Because I was given the opportunity to live in that home, which was founded by an industrialist in the 1880s, no that I am in a position where I can also do something, naturally I want to do it. ” he told the New Zealand Herald.

At the age of 85, as one of the most successful industrialists in New Zealand, Dunajtschik is ready to give back.

Already known for his charitable works — having financed the country’s Life Flight Trust helicopter rescue service — Dunajtschik is devoted to construction of a new children’s hospital in Wellington. In 2017, he spent $50 million dollars of his own money toward building it. But Dunajtschik had no desire to simply throw money at the new hospital. He took a hands-on approach to all his projects.

Over the summer, construction passed a major milestone. As Dunajtschik and Spotswood looked on, the industrial support cranes were cleared from the site, signaling the outside was complete. “Those people that are born with a healthy body and mind can look after themselves and those unfortunate to be born with, or suffering ill health, need our help,” said Dunajtschik.